Zooey Deschanel on New Girl: Adorkable or Tweepulsive? Neither: Preempted! Instead, Male and Female Perspectives on the G.O.P. Debate

Ah. Tuesday night, 9:30 p.m. Time to settle back, shrug off the day’s cares, and enjoy a half-hour’s worth of Zooey Deschanel’s adorkable-tweepulsive antics as Jess on New Girl, Fox's canny, postmodern mash-up of I Love Lucy and Three’s Company.

But oh no! New Girl has been preempted for the second week in a row! Instead we have a special edition of The X Factor. Once our rage has subsided, we can acknowledge that we enjoy a good reality competition as much as anyone. But The X Factor isn’t nearly craven and desperate enough for our tastes—we want the “real shit,” and for that we now switch to the Republican debate on CNN, already in progress, live from Las Vegas, with your moderator Anderson Cooper.

We first notice that Newt Gingrich and Cooper are both wearing the same violet tie.

Bruce:Twins! Adorkable! They should get married and then they could borrow each other’s ties all the time. Which is the true homosexual agenda.

Juli:Adorkable! I can totally see a Gingrich-Cooper union. (Cooper Union!) Newt’s due for another marriage any day now. [Checks watch.] Any … day … now.

On the subject of illegal immigration, Michele Bachmann criticizes President Obama for having an illegal-alien aunt and uncle. She goes on to note, “I will enforce English as the official language of the United States.”

Bruce: Adorkable! Mentioning Obama’s distant relatives–distant foreign-born relatives–is so Mean Girls–clever, though we wonder if Bachmann will at some point regret opening up the issues of family trees and command of English.

Juli: Why stop at enforcing English as the official language of the United States? What about hyperbolic, racially charged English intended to provoke and offend?

Wayne Newton is in the audience! And he’s had less plastic surgery than you’d think.

Bruce: Adorkable! Except wait—Wayne Newton gets to vote?

Juli: Bruce, I highly recommend visiting WayneNewton.com. Its welcome image features, from left to right, a long-stemmed red rose, a horse wearing a lei, some casino chips, an acoustic guitar, two playing cards, what appears to be Heineken in a Champagne flute, Newton, a well-polished microphone, another poker chip, a gold record, two die, and a black limousine. It is sort of a visual approximation of Jess’s id—random cultural signifiers that when placed together add up to nonsense. Adorkable! This is still a post about Fox’s sitcom New Girl, right?

Rick Perry evades a question about the huge number of Texas children with no health insurance by launching an attack on Romney's having once hired illegal aliens to mow his lawn. Later Perry manages to turn a question about repealing the 14th amendment’s provision granting citizenship to anyone born in America into an attack on President Obama's energy policy.

Bruce: Adorkable! This is the kind of intellectual Jiu-Jitsu we could use in a 21st-century president who will have to sit down face-to-face with the Chinese to renegotiate credit terms.

Juli:Tweepulsive. Intellectual prowess blah blah blah—why does Perry look like a mortician running for president of a local destitute graveyard? His hair is the exact same postmortem gray as his boxy suit. He could use a silly hat or some puffy sleeves.

In response to a question about the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste deposit, an actual Republican, Newt Gingrich, admits, “I’m not a scientist,” in a way that doesn’t imply scientists are evil. He then goes on to implicitly suggest it might be useful to take counsel from “scientific experts.”

Bruce: Adorkable! Professor Gingrich shows why he’s the intellectual titan of the Republican Party, unafraid to embrace post-14th-century thought. And kudos to the audience for not hissing! Then again, this comparatively informed and rational portion of the debate might be due to the fact that the Bible says nothing about how radioactive waste should be disposed of—not even Leviticus.

Juli:As long as it’s heterosexual radioactive waste I don’t see a problem with the nuclear material enjoying the same rights as other Americans.

Rick Santorum finally gets a chance to talk, but something is wrong. He looks like he’s about to cry, his tremulous countenance that of a first-grader who has to pee really badly but is afraid to raise his hand to ask to go to the bathroom. One senses psychic turmoil. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be here? Perhaps this so-called campaign is an elaborate emotional subterfuge. Deep down inside, does Rick Santorum loathe himself?

Bruce: Adorkable, I think. But that would explain certain chapters in my romantic history.

Juli: Tweepulsive. Everyone loathes Rick Santorum. It’s much cooler to ironically embrace Rick Santorum. If Santorum wants to escape his essential Santorum-ness, he must stop trying to outrun it. What could be more original, daring, and brave—in a word, un-Santorum—than appearing to like Rick Santorum?

Michele Bachmann points out that she’s a mom. Notes that moms are suffering economically. “Hold on, moms,” she shouts encouragingly, clinching her argument as to why she should be president.

Bruce: Adorkable! The underlying presumption that people like their moms is so cute.

Juli:Adorkable! Hi, Mom! I would vote for you for president! Mom–Dad 2012!

Herman Cain stands by his statement that people without jobs only have themselves to blame. CNN cuts to shots of visibly well-fed audience members applauding.

Bruce: Adorkable! Let them eat Bacon Cheeseburger Pizzas! (“A pizza loaded with beef, onions, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese topped with bacon bits and sliced pickles creates a favorite we call Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza,” notes the Specialty Pizza page on the Godfather's Pizza Web site. Speaking of which, when are advocacy groups going to go after Cain for promoting stereotypical images of Italian-Americans, or do they have their hands full withJersey Shore?)

Juli: I think anyone familiar with the Godfather’s Web site probably just has his hands full with pizza.

On a question about whether faith should matter in a campaign, Gringrich asks rhetorically, “How can I trust you if you don’t pray?”

Bruce: Adorkable, if you're not a former Mrs. Gingrich.

Juli: Tweepulsive. Trust issues are so boring. On the spectrum of interesting issues, “trust” ranks right in between “daddy” and “Tina Brown–era Newsweek.” Hey-o!

Herman Cain contradicts himself in the space of three sentences: “I would have a policy that we don't negotiate with terrorists. You have to lay down that line. But you have to look at every situation."

Bruce: Adorkable! A professional politician would need six or seven sentences.

Juli: Godfather’s special: with every two sentences, customers receive a free contradiction and a basket of 30 Cheez-E BreadSTIXX with cinnamon dipping sauce.

Ron Paul dares to attack Ronald Reagan! For having traded arms for hostages!

Bruce: Adorkable! He’s so frisky! He’s like a puppy with unnaturally large balls. Hey Juli, I notice I’ve found everything these candidates do adorkable. I would be terrified if any of them became president, but they all make for surprisingly capable Zooey Deschanel substitutes. Maybe they should guest star on the show. Gingrich could be a professor Jess had an ill-advised affair with in college. Michele Bachmann could be the cranky landlady, like Lisa Kudrow’s Aunt Sassy on The Comeback. Mitt Romney could be the handsome, vaguely presidential actor who plays the president in an old movie Jess and her roommates watch on TV. I want my casting Emmy now.

Juli:I’ve always said Ron Paul is the original manic pixie dream girl.